A project to evaluate current practices in fine art image reproduction is conducted in which pieces of artwork in various media are being imaged by participating museums. As part of this project, observers were asked to make adjustments in softcopy fine art reproductions. The goal is to see how people working in museums, libraries and archives make color adjustments to artwork presented to them on screen. Observers were led through various interfaces allowing them to adjust the image seen on the screen to better represent the original in a light booth. They were asked to make adjustments until the screen image was ‘good enough,’ as an exact match may neither be possible nor necessary for us to detect relevant patterns in adjustment among observers. Patterns or trends in adjustments by observers can be used as an indication of how images should be processed to match with the adjustment by observers most closely. The adjustments by observers were compared with the prediction by three chromatic adaptation models. Overall the Fairchild92 model outperforms the Bradford and CAT02 transformations in matching with adjustments by observers more closely.
Jun Jiang, Franziska Frey, Susan Farnand, "Evaluating CATs as Predictors of Observer Adjustments in Softcopy Fine Art Reproduction" in Proc. IS&T 18th Color and Imaging Conf., 2010, pp 54 - 61, https://doi.org/10.2352/CIC.2010.18.1.art00011